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>-What is market socialism, btw?
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> Alexandre
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I really, REALLY don't want to get into this, but a brief definition. MS is the idea that you can combine public ownership of productive assets with market relations among producung units. The former Yugoslavia, with its producer cooperatives that were in some sense owned by the state, but which kept some or all of the profits, minus taxes, and which had a degree of self-management, is the classic example. China is trying to do something like thsi without having self-management. The Soviets in the perestroika period talked about it, referring back to the NEP of the 1920s.
There is a HUGE literature on this topic. The Yugoslavs put out a lot on it, see eg the work by Jaroslav Vanek or Branko Horvat (The Political Economy of Socialism). You might look at David Schweickart's Against Capitalism, my favorite statement of the view. It is publsihed in France, or was; also orginally bu Cambridge UP and now by Westview.
Obvioiusly many socialist define socialsim in terms of the elimination of the market, and these reject the VERY IDEA of MS. I feel quite strongly that MS is the only _possible_ form of socialism, and in 20 years of work and research on the topic I have never seen a remotely plausible argument that nonmarket socialism would be anywhere near as attractive except, possibly, for limited purposes of development and primitive accumulation in a poor nation. Maybe.
This subject raises real fury on the list, and every few years we do go a round on it, basically with me standing off all the snarling advocates of nonmarket socialism, until I finally quit in disgust because no one seems to get the point, or they quit, because it's so obvious to everyone that I have totally capitulated to Reaganite Thatcherism, and have no business on the left, why don't I go over the Mises list where I belong? Except that Doug is probably a MS, but doesn't want to say so. Anyway, I WILL NOT _NOT_ NNOOTT!!! become involved in this debate just now. ASk me off line if you have further questions.
jks
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